The Gospel reading for Sunday came from the 5th chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke. This is the story of Jesus going out to fish with His soon to be Apostles.
After teaching the people Jesus calls to Peter and tells him to “push out into the deep” and lower their nets to catch fish. Peter, being Peter, decides to argue with Jesus. You see they are tired, they have been fishing all night and all they want to do is clean their nets and go home. But Jesus compels them to “push out into the deep.” They do and the catch is amazing.
St. Ambrose sees the spiritual meaning in this passage as the invitation from Jesus to all of us to give our lives over to the deep mystery of the knowledge of the Son of God. However we cannot come to the full knowledge of God simply by reading and study, we must experience the living God in our lives! This requires a great amount of faith.
I like to think of this passage in relation to the story of Peter walking on the water. Jesus beckoned Peter out of the boat, out of his comfort zone if you will, and to walk on the water to Him. All was fine until Peter realized he was far from what was comfortable and started to panic. At that moment he started to sink and Jesus reached out His hand to bring Peter to safety.
In this Gospel story Jesus is asking, no commanding us, to “push out into the deep” to move away from the shore of our lives and to venture out further then we have ever gone before. He is commanding us to leave behind our safe and secure lives and go WAY out and drop our nets, our spiritual nets, and to have the faith we need that when we fall, and we will, He will be there to help us.
Jesus never leaves us alone; He is always there beside us. We may not always see or feel Him, but he is there to help if we just ask.
If we are to grow spiritually and if we are to grow the Church and truly be the light that the world needs us to be, then we are going to have to go out, in the deep waters. But just as Peter would not have left the shore without his net, we need to be spiritually ready.
One does not set out on a journey without having all the supplies necessary for the trip. You spend time packing and making sure that you know where you are going and how we are going to get there. This is the point of the story. Prepare yourselves by pushing into the deep of the spiritual life so we can be used in this world to help people into the next.
“Push out into the Deep” and your life will never be the same.
